Turkey organized a dignified military funeral ceremony on Saturday morning to pay final respects to five senior Libyan officers, prominently including General Muhammad Ali Ahmad al-Haddad—the highest-ranking military commander in western Libya—who tragically lost their lives along with three crew members in a devastating private jet crash earlier in the week.
The ill-fated aircraft, transporting the delegation comprising the general and his accompanying military personnel, encountered a catastrophic technical malfunction shortly after departing from Ankara, the capital of Turkey, on Tuesday, leading to the immediate loss of all eight individuals on board as confirmed by Libyan authorities investigating the incident.
The prominent Libyan group had just completed a series of high-level defense consultations in Ankara focused on enhancing and expanding military collaboration between the two nations, underscoring Turkey's longstanding strategic support for the western Libyan government, before commencing their return journey to the capital city of Tripoli.
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The formal proceedings unfolded at precisely 8:00 a.m. local time at the Murted Airfield military base situated near Ankara, drawing attendance from Turkey's top military leadership including the chief of general staff and the defense minister, during which the five caskets—each solemnly draped in the national flag of Libya—were ceremoniously prepared and loaded onto a repatriation flight bound for their homeland.
In a gesture of solidarity, Turkey's military chief Selcuk Bayraktaroglu accompanied the remains on the flight to Libya, while authorities have enlisted technical expertise from Germany to conduct an independent and thorough examination of the recovered black boxes, ensuring transparency in determining the precise cause of the accident amid Libya's complex ongoing efforts toward national military unification under United Nations mediation.
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